After the End
by Mimosa de Naranja
Summary: What if Crowley and Aziraphale hadn't been able to stop the Apocalypse? What if the Earth had been destroyed in the Great War? And what if our heroes had been captured and imprisoned by their respective armies?
1. Chapter 1

The silence that could be felt inside the jail was overwhelming. Outside, as the demon was perfectly aware, the noise was so intense that after a while it got comfortable in the brain like the background of every thought. The cacophony got imprinted in the mind, making the hell's inhabitants eager to get sent to Earth on any mission, just to escape from the horrible noise.

But there wasn't an Earth anymore.

And this silence was much, much worse than the noise.

The demon Crowley was sprawled onto the floor, and he had not moved, not even an inch, for the last three hundred years. Why bother, right? He was going to be inside that jail for the rest of his existence, and nobody cared to see if he was still alive and functional, so there was no point in being stylish. That was a little bit painful, the loss of style, at least for him. In the many years (millennia, even, can you imagine?) spent on Earth, Crowley had been, if not the best dressed, at least careful enough with clothes to have his own style. Sure, it had been a shaggy, blend-perfectly-with-background, careful-to-seem-careless style, but it had been his style, dammit.

Easy to forget that, now that he had only rags to wear.

And the movement! Not just his signature swagger, that was something to see but kind of unavoidable. Once a snake, get it? No, now he was remembering the movement on Earth. Everything had some kind of movement. From the wandering of the clouds to the slight bending of the blades of grass, everything moved on the Earth. Slow, fast, graceful and clumsy. Sometimes relaxing, sometimes startling. And Crowley had moved there, too, back when everything was better. There was no movement inside that jail when on Earth he had moved like lightning.

He drowned a sigh and went on remembering his Bentley, now lost forever. That was the fifth thought on his list of Happy Thoughts, and he used it a lot. The first three items on that list were much happier thoughts, but Crowley had discovered that they came with a side of mourning, too, so even though the Bentley was only the fifth thought in the list, it was the most used.

Crowley's heart only hurt a little when he thought of his Bentley.

He remembered his car for a couple of years, and when he finished remembering he decided to move his arm a little. Just the left arm, no point in overexerting himself. And only the right amount of movement, just enough to make the tiniest sound against the hard and dirty floor of the jail.

Like that.

Oooooh, much better. That little sound should hold him for another hundred years or so.

Sometimes you had to make your own entertainment. Otherwise, you'd go crazy.


	2. Chapter 2

2

Crowley's List of Happy Thoughts had consisted of fourteen items when he was first brought to the jail. The List had been carefully thought, you could even say it had been _crafted_, for Crowley had been aware it would be one, if not the only, thread that connected him with his sanity. No one liked a crazy demon. So, the order of events had been the following:

Armaggeddon had been brought to Earth.

The War Between Heaven and Hell had been fought (Hell lost, in case you wanted to know).

It was discovered that a certain demon had refused to fight on the Great War, preferring to hide on the sidelines with a certain angel having a really interesting philosophical discussion that turned out to be the last discussion they would ever have. At the time of the discovery, the fact that the demon and the angel had tried to stop Armaggeddon had been pointed out by their respective bosses, and Things Had Gone South.

Said demon was found guilty of treason, tortured and thrown in jail. It is unknown what happened to the angel.

Said demon carefully composed his List. It took him about ten years and contained the aforementioned fourteen items. As a matter of fact, choosing the items had been easy. The majority of the time had been spent deciding the order of each item of the list.

Not the first three, of course. Those were done by the time the jail floor dust had settled.

So it was perfectly, completely clear that the List had consisted of fourteen items and it would remain that way for the rest of Crowley's existence. That is, forever.

Imagine the demon's surprise when another item appeared.

The exact date was a bit uncertain, but it should have been on his first century as a prisoner, when he tended to retreat inside his own head a lot. The shock of being stuck in Hell without access to entertainment, sound or company had taken its toll, and Crowley had used his List of Happy Thoughts not as the crutch it was meant to be, but as the only world he was allowed to have. Hence the retreating.

So it was possible that he was a bit spaced out at the moment the Hands appeared. By the time he realized something had happened inside the Jail Where Nothing Ever Happened, it was over. Finished. Done.

But he had been vaguely aware of soft hands caressing his face, and the taste of water (cold water, even) being eagerly gulped.

When he came to himself nobody was there. But his throat and the inside of his mouth were Suspiciously Not Burning, which was something really remarkable in the deepest pit of Hell.

And so the Happy Thought number fifteen was born, and quickly promoted to number Four.

You know, just in case it had something to do with the first three.


End file.
